Computer systems commonly include one or more databases for storing data in an organized manner for processing and/or reference. Database management applications may be provided to manage such databases. Such database management applications may enable elements of data, or data objects, to be added to, removed from, or read from a database. In some computer systems, duplicate or equivalent data objects may exist in a database. For example, two data objects that are identical or a data object that is an updated version of another data object may exist in a database.
In some database applications, such as those in distributed processing environments, it is important to avoid duplicate data in databases such as service registries. Service registries may serve different system functions such as governance, production, and test functions. Data objects may need to be transferred among such service registries without introducing duplicate data. It is fairly simple to determine whether a data object is identical to an existing data object in a service registry. However, it is substantially more difficult to determine if an existing data object is a different version (i.e., a substantially equivalent version) of another object in a service registry. In distributed processing environments, it is important to identify such equivalents to enable basic operations, such as data object promotion or registry synchronization. Therefore, there is a need in the art to more effectively identify substantially duplicate or equivalent data objects to avoid introducing such objects into service registries.